Drosera was an interlude while away from home. Expectations for effect of carbonate of ammonia on Dionaea. The important phenomenon in Drosera is the segregation of the red fluid within the leaf, not action of carbonate of ammonia on the red fluid.

Transcription

15 Marine Parade | Eastbourne

Oct. 20th

My dear Sir

We return to ``Down Bromley Kent'' on 26th. —

I have heard from Huxley about the Nat. Hist. Review
& it has my good wishes & I shall certainly take it
in.— I really know nothing whatever about vegetable irritability
(it is quite beyond my scope) except in case of Orchids; I have a large mass of notes
with many new facts, but I resolutely, against my inclination, put them away a
month ago with the determination to work them up & get drawings made at some
distant period; for I am convinced that I ought to work on
Variation & not amuse myself with interludes.— Drosera was an accident
owing to my being from home & having nothing to do.— My
paper on Drosera, from containing minute particulars of numerous experiments, would not,
I think, be fitted for the Review; & if I do not deceive myself some of the
results are sufficiently curious to be published in some old standing Transactions.
Where I shall send them I know not yet; as I cannot judge of evidence till all my
experiments are tabulated & that will be a long job.— I may add that I told Huxley some months ago that I really could
not assist by writing; I may add that my health is so weak that I cannot work above
3 hour a day; & I am at all times a most slow worker.—

I am so much obliged to you for going to try C. of Ammonia on
Dionæa. I shd expect (but expectations
are oftener wrong than right) that of C. of Ammonia on disc of leaf would cause
it to shut slowly; but would produce no effect on back of leaf or on marginal
spikes.— What it will do on the sensitive lamina, Heaven only
knows.— I shd. expect after
leaf has closed that each of the little tortoise-shell glands on the disc of leaf would
secrete a minute bead of liquor. I must have expressed myself badly,—it is the
red fluid being broken up or segregated with-in the sensitive lamina of a
closed leaf, as in Drosera, which seems to me the important point of
accordance; & not so much the action of C. of Ammonia on the red-fluid
in the sensitive Hairs & tortoise-shell-like glands.— I
will try, & shd. not be in the least surprised, at
C. of Ammonia acting on the fluid in cells of common leaves.—

The Darwins in fact did not return home until 10 November 1860
(`Journal'; Appendix II). See letter to Daniel Oliver, 23 [October 1860].

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f2 2956.f2

Thomas Henry Huxley and John Lubbock were planning to take over the editing, in
conjunction with several other naturalists, of the Natural History Review, a
scientific quarterly until then published by naturalists in Dublin. Oliver was also one
of the new editors. See letters to T. H. Huxley, 20 July
[1860], and to John Lubbock, 20 July [1860].

+

f3 2956.f3

Orchids was published in 1862.

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f4 2956.f4

CD eventually published his work on Drosera and other insectivorous plants
in Insectivorous plants, which appeared in 1875.